I hear this a lot, especially from relatively new consultants, and especially from women.

“There are people who know a lot more than I do.”

“There are people who’ve done this kind of project many more times than I have.”

“There are people who have been doing this work for decades longer than I have.”

Of course, all of those statements are likely true, and will be forever. So what?

If you are getting hung up on statements like these, you are really focusing on just the first way that people become known as experts. There are two other equally compelling ways to reach the same status.

1. The Expert with Real World Experience

This is the been-there, done-that expert or “hands dirty” or “eye witness” expert. It’s the kind of expert that most people are thinking of when they pooh-pooh their own expertise.

2. The Reporting Expert

This is the kind of expertise you gain by constantly listening, observing, and analyzing. If you are good at soaking up all kinds of information and squeezing it back out in more useful forms, or are great at crowd sourcing, curating, and convening, you are likely this kind of expert.

3. The Expert with Insightful Perspectives

This expert focuses more on the future than on the past. They talk about “what ifs” and “why nots.” They are often more visionary or inspirational that other types of experts.

Is one better than another? That totally depends on what you are doing, and who you are doing it with. Performing brain surgery, yes, we want the real world expert. Teaching others about how to solve problems that current brain surgeons are having? I’d go with one of the other two.

In my own journey, I started out as the real world expert. As I built my consulting and training practice, I focused more on being a “reporting” expert. Now, as I build my coaching/mentoring practice, I’m working more on the “insightful perspectives.”

What kind of expert are you? Did you start as one kind and transition into another? I’d love to hear your path in the comments.

People love to follow a good system. Just look at the hundreds (thousands?) of popular diets and fitness regimes out there.

You might think of it as a process, method, game plan, or recipe. But in consulting or coaching, it’s often called a framework. SWOT analysis is a framework. Myers-Briggs is a framework.

It’s your approach to solving common problems for your clients. You can make up frameworks yourself, or you can adopt frameworks created by others. (If you use someone else’s, be sure to do your research. Sometimes simply acknowledging the creator is enough; other times you need to pay a licensing fee.)

I’ve found frameworks, even very simple, limited ones, to be extremely helpful in working with nonprofits. It gives everyone — you and your clients — a place to start and a way to move forward together. Frameworks can be especially helpful in giving some structure to otherwise hard-to-grasp conceptual work. They can also add some credibility to your work. When they are really good, they can become a core part of your brand.

Because of all of these benefits, you can also use them in your marketing!

“Start Here, Then Try, Next Steps” — We created this framework to organize a lot of the free advice we offer on our website. You can see it at work on these pages on growing your email list and email newsletters. We also use it to organize the content within the Mentoring Program for Communications Directors.

Don’t you love those moments when you get these wonderful big ideas or a surge of pure clarity about your work? It’s definitely a huge high for me.

I love those moments so much, and they have led to so many good business decisions, that I started to be more conscious of what I was doing right before they happened.

While sometimes it’s on a walk, or in the shower, I’d say more than 80% of the time, it’s when I am reading non-fiction.

There’s something about reading about other people’s ideas and experiences — even when (or perhaps especially when) they have nothing to do with nonprofits or marketing — that puts my own mind into creative high gear and I start connecting dots in whole new ways.

So, while I use to think of reading time as a luxury, I know now that it is actually extremely important to my business development.

What I Blog About Here

Nonprofit Marketing Training

Need to know how to create content for your nonprofit clients, like writing a nonprofit annual report or email newsletter? Or putting together an editorial calendar for them? We cover these topics, and many, many more at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com

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Nonprofit Marketing Training

Need to know how to create content for your nonprofit clients, like writing a nonprofit annual report or email newsletter? Or putting together an editorial calendar for them? We cover these topics, and many, many more at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com